We came into the land of Mickey, Donald, Goofy and lots of those childhood characters that we saw and raved and dreamt about as kids at around 12PM. Thanks (so much! For what all can we thank you ??) to Anup Bhaisaab and Bhabhi, we started off with a sumptuous breakfast of aloo paratha- and a cool talking GPS device (a Garmin Nuvi) - and drove down to Disney World's Magic Kingdom. I was expecting the road to the amusement parks to be jampacked with cars, and police vehicles all around the place, but the journey was unusually smooth. Perhaps because it was noon and quite late in the day. We reached the Disney World area - its like a medium sized city - with its own vehicles, a huge open air parking lot that accommodates more than 65000 vehicles anytime, huge theme parks (besides the 4, there are places like Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon, etc)..the roads themselves are like freeways. We reached the place and then rushed to the tram that takes you from the parking lot to the ticketing area. Later, we were to realize what a mistake we made - by just parking our car and rushing to catch the tram.. We then caught the tram, a train rather of small coaches..and reached the ticketing area, where we got Shveta's ticket (I'd got mine the day before when I was at Epcot)...After getting Shveta's ticket from the counter, we boarded the monorail from the ticketing counter to the Disney Magic Kingdom - to describe even the monorail journey is an amazing experience by itself - its a smooth, bullet-train like vehicle that moves on a rail across lakes and forested areas into the Theme park. You suddenly start seeing the huge castle like landmark in the foreground, and many rides and entertainment areas from that place, and a huge lake with ferries coming and going ...the monorail stopped at the Disney World entrance, and boy, its a complete township by itself. The setting is quite like an old, European city - with narrow, cobble-stoned streets, beautiful buildings that are basically modern eateries, cafes, memorabilia stores, merchandise shops, etc...the entrance also has a station that has another train system - the Disney World railroad that leads you to another part of the huge village thats the Magic Kingdom theme park. The station reminded me of Euston or King's Cross St Pancras station in England - old victorian look blended with spanish thick walled architecture (a better example should be the kind of stations you see in old US civil war movies with the "Ye Olde.." prefix)...we walked down from that entranceway onto the Main Street towards the huge Cinderella's castle - the castle is the one you'd find in any Disney film logo..the crowd was overwhelming near that square - the weather couldn't have been better, warm, sunny weather as pleasant as a winter afternoon in India. We were armed with a map and a schedule of events at various places within the park, and ofcourse, our tickets..I had decided to first take the thrill rides..and we started towards one of the many "Lands"..they are - Adventure Land, Fantasy Land, Frontier Land, Tomorrow Land and Mickey Mouse's Toon Fair Land. The Frontier Land has some of the best thrill rides in Magic Kingdom - Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, etc..we were still around the castle when we saw all the streets crowded and sealed, and all the people seemed to be standing along the sideways, waiting for something to happen. We tried to make our way, a little anxious since we had come so late in the day (the park opens at 9AM) - then we came to know the reason - there was a Dream Will Come True parade coming - first, we saw a vintage car with some Disney characters, followed by a group of boys and girls dressed in Disney costumes coming, dancing to the tune of a lovely song..followed by lots of floats of Disney characters and movies - Cinderella and the Seven Dwarves, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King, etc, then a float of all the villians - Cruella DeVil from 101 Dalmatians, etc - and at the end, the king himself, Mickey Mouse, along with Minnie, Pluto, Donald, etc. A long parade with lots of dancers it was..as it went passed us, the crowd was slowly getting dispersed to various destinations. We headed towards the FrontierLand. The first place - Splash Mountain. We went to the Fast Pass distribution area, put our tickets and got our Splash Mountain fast passes. I actually couldn't get one through my ticket and there was a small problem - Shveta got her pass. The time to enter Splash Mountain was 1.35PM so we thought of going to Big Thunder Mountain railroad and tried our luck with the fast passes there - the normal lines for most of the Thrill rides in Disney are so long during Thanksgiving that it makes sense to try the Fast Passes. These are free, timed entries to certain events which are a lot in demand within Disney, esp. the rides. But the timings that the Fast Passes show are quite spread out, and once you avail of a Fast Pass, you can't use your ticket for another Fast Pass in another ride till atleast an hour. So, I tried my ticket at Big Thunder and got a Fast Pass. So, we had a fast pass for Splash Mtn and one for Big Thunder, and therefore we went to the ticket counter of Splash and asked the guy there to help. He suggested us to surrender the Big Thunder and get a switch pass to Splash for both, and so we traded the Big Thunder one and went to Splash. Splash Mountain is based on a Disney character, Brer Rabbit - its a roller coaster ride that ends with a huge, almost vertical, fall from the top to a water body - the vehicle being a raft like structure, and end up with a splash - wow, we thought we'd die when we fell from there and it was really thrilling!..then we thought of going to Tomorrow Land, and see a few things since we were quite daunted by the sight of the queue infront of other rides. We went to an Indy car race there and I and Shveta "drove" an Indy car. A very kiddish thing. Took quite a while. We then tried our luck with Fast passes and got the fast pass of Space Mountain - a fastpaced rollercoaster ride in a sci-fi setting. We got the timing for 8.30PM!..our next destination? Stich's Great Escape - based on the Lilo & Stich character. Very stupid, but cute trip. A character's name was Commander Gantu, by the way :-)..we were quite tired of walking - the distances are huge across the different Lands. So we walked by and had some Mickey shaped cookie'n icecream sandwiches and tried our luck at the Small World in Fantasy Land - a musical journey on a boat through a cave that has some very interesting puppets of various cultures - European, Chinese, Arabic (India and Arabic, as always, clubbed together as bindi-adorned veiled girls dancing or playing the sitar), Hawaiian, Mexican, Japanese, etc. Seems like its a lot in demand too and took us a long time to actually get to it...then, we went to the Adventure Land and tried out the Pirates of the Caribbean, a very very long queue - but absolutely worth the visit - a journey very similar to the one in the movies where Orlando Bloom travels on the ship to find Jack Sparrow. Cannot describe it - its just mindblowingly awesome. After that, we had a few more icecream sandwiches and went back to Frontier Land to try Big Thunder. A hugely thrilling ride on a roller-coaster train travelling in break-neck speed. Disney roller-coasters however are not very long. But they are good, no doubt. It was already getting dark when we finished with Big Thunder. We didn't want to visit the kiddish places in Fantasyland, more because there was so much and so little time - Peter Pan's flight, Mickey Philharmagic 3D movie, Snow White's scary adventures, etc. We wanted to cover the thrill rides first.We then went to the Country Bear Jamboree - a cute little show of some bear - puppets singing some honky-tonk music and it was straight out of one of the 1940s-50s cartoon movies, with some wall animal trophies, like moose and deer and bisons also singing happily!!..by the time we got through it, we tried catching up with our colleagues Hemant, Sonia, Manish and Richa who were somewhere in Tomorrow Land. We decided to meet for the fireworks at Cinderella's castle scheduled at 9PM. Just before that, we had gone to Tomorrow Land to try our luck at Space Mountain as we had fast passes for that, but to our utter dismay, we were told it was closed for sometime. We then went with the group to the central plaza that was the castle area, and then started the most spectacular event I have ever witnessed in my life -the fireworks show!..With the castle changing colors from a deep florescent blue, to aquamarine, to coffee brown, etc, and all kinds of fireworks lighting up the skies to the tune of a lovely Disney song, it lasted many memorable minutes...we again dispersed - Hemant et al enroute to Peter Pan while we to try our luck at Space Mountain again before calling it a day. And to our luck it worked! We went it -and it happened to be one scary ride!!..At breakneck speed, we were travelling, nay zooming, across dark space, through wormholes lighted up in all kinds of psychedelic colored lights with sudden twists and turns, vertical falls, steep rises, etc - Shveta was screaming at the top of her voice!!!..We finally dragged our tired feet across the cold night to the exit gates when we again saw the oh so familiar crowd on the streets waiting for something to happen...and there it was, the legendary electric parade of Thanksgiving. Rekha bhabhi had told us it was once in a lifetime kind of thing and she was not wrong. The parade had everything in lights, all Disney characters in psychedelic lights walking past, singing and dancing etc..and then we finally bid Disney World goodbye, dead tired that we were by then..we caught the monorail, which took us through the inside of a huge Disney Contemporary Resort - a huge multistoreyed building through which the monorail passes. Imagine getting out of the monorail and finding yourself in a beautifully carpetted lobby of a swanky hotel, on the second or the third floor!!!..we finally reached the ticketing center and took a tram to the parking lot. And then we realized we didn't know where the car was parked!!!!..We had forgotten the parking lot number and there were 65000 cars parked!..Shveta called up bhaisaab and informed him and we all got really scared. Then I pieced up all my memories and thankfully after some walking got to our car. And then we just had enough energy to get into the vehicle and drive back home to Winter Park. As I recollect things we did on Thursday and Friday - at EPCOT and Magic Kingdom, I regret not having been able to cover all the attractions at either of the theme parks. But then they are so huge, with so much to see and relish, besides the landscape, the buildings,and all of this while wading through a huge ocean of humanity, all that we could cover was incredible. Anup bhaisaab told me that people in the US save money for a long time before coming to Orlando and going to all the theme parks. We couldn't buy any memorabilia - the entire exercise of looking at those stuff takes a lot of time, and then things are just prohibitively expensive. A tee that costs not more than 5 dollars at JCP or GAP would cost nothing less than 30-35 bucks in a theme park. Even a small keychain would take you back by 7-8 dollars. Its just plain and simple loot. Disney, Universal, etc must be raking in billions. But then, they have to continue running the show even during the lean periods - periods when Florida is hit by hurricanes or when its pouring cats and dogs. I saw people spending a couple of thousand dollars buying junk there!! Anyways, all I carry with me is tons of memories and some snaps - I would collect some of the snaps from Hemant and Manish Sharma later, to create a montage of pics we took there. For sure, the moments in some of those attractions, including the fireworks and the electric parade, were some of the best moments of my life..
No comments:
Post a Comment